[Cincinnati Enquirer] On a cold December afternoon, standing next to the empty wood frame where his mailbox used to be, Chuck Klein tried to explain why he’s spent so much time the past few years sending emails to government officials, writing letters to a president and a congressman, working with a private investigator and a lawyer, and, finally, suing the U.S. Postal Service.
"This is where it was," Klein said, motioning to a mailbox-sized hole in the frame. "This is where we want the box to be."
It's as simple as that, Klein said. He wants his mailbox back.
But after years of arguing with the Postal Service, the seemingly minor bureaucratic dispute over the fate of Klein’s beige stainless steel mailbox has become something more. It is now, quite literally, a federal case that challenges the mission and obligations of an institution as old as the nation itself.
What is the Postal Service supposed to be? What are its obligations to its tens of millions of customers?
Klein didn’t set out to ask those questions, but his years-long campaign to win back his mailbox is raising them all the same.
In Klein’s view, none of this was necessary. For several years, the Postal Service delivered mail to his old mailbox on the edge of his 130-acre property in Brown County, about an hour east of Cincinnati. If he received a package too big for the mailbox, the carrier brought it to his door.
|
